


Supercatural

by M3zzaTh3M3z



Category: Supernatural, ねこあつめ | Neko Atsume: Kitty Collector
Genre: Cats, Crossover, Dean Hates Witches, Disappearances, Games, Gen, Kitty Collector, Lost Pets, Mystery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-30
Updated: 2016-08-19
Packaged: 2018-05-10 12:13:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 17,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5584996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/M3zzaTh3M3z/pseuds/M3zzaTh3M3z
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and Dean are called to Nekoton, a small cat obsessed town, on a possible hunt after an elderly, feline loving resident vanished. When they get there, they realize she isn't the only one missing; almost all of the towns cats are gone! Also, everyone seems to be playing new game called 'Neko Atsume' developed by one of the town's teenagers. Is there a connection? The Winchesters are here to find out!<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dean's Bad Cattitude

**Author's Note:**

> I apologize in advance for this mess. If it's any help I didn't come up with the chapter name.

Standing silently, the girl watched the rain lash down onto the furiously sweeping windscreen wipers of the black ’67 Chevy Impala as it pulled into the motel car lot. Two men scrambled out of the car, both tall, one ridiculously so, their hair soaked in seconds. Each carrying a bag in one hand and making an attempt to cover their head with the other, they ran towards the entrance.

“Excuse me!” she called, her voice almost lost in the wind. “Can you help me?”

She didn’t really expect it to work. Few people were willing to spend even a second longer out in the storm than they had to, and certainly not just to talk to a teenaged girl. But, to her surprise, both men stopped and looked towards her. Encouraged, she ran over, keeping her jacket wrapped tight around the pile of papers to protect them from the rain.

“Are you okay?” asked the taller man, his face scrunching a little in concern.

Fumbling slightly, her fingers getting a bit numb in the cold and wet, the girl thrust the single laminated copy of her poster towards them. It showed an orange tabby cat playing with a shopping box, with the words ‘HAVE YOU SEEN THIS CAT?’ in bold at the top.

Taking it off her, the shorter man scanned his eyes across it then huffed and passed it to the other. “Damn cats,” he muttered. “I’m going to go get a room.” He hurried off, leaving the girl and the tall man stood alone in the parking lot.

“So your cat’s name is Fred?” the man asked and the girl nodded. “And… he’s a ‘lady killer?’ And… what’s this?” The man wiped the drops of rain off the laminated plastic and squinted slightly. “He’s got a power level of 150? What does that mean?”

So they weren’t from around here then. “It’s a local thing, doesn’t matter. Have you seen Fred at all? I’m really worried, with all the disappearances and stuff…”

He shook his head, sending more raindrops flying from the ends of his wet hair. “No, sorry,” he said. “We only just got here. But if you give me a poster, I’ll call if I do see him. And kid?”

“Yeah?” replied the girl. If she was irritated at being called kid, she hid it well.

“Get home soon. It’s dark, it’s a storm, you shouldn’t be out on a night like this, OK?”

Shrugging, the girl said, “but I need to find Fred.”

“He’ll be hiding inside in weather like this, don’t worry, you won’t be missing out on your chance of finding him by getting yourself safe.”

“Ok…” she agreed reluctantly. “Thank you!”

She handed him a poster, muttering her thanks yet again and then was gone into the storm. Faintly, the sound of her voice, still calling for Fred could be heard. Quickly, the man stuffed the paper into his pocket and then ran inside, thoroughly soaked and Fred already half gone from his mind.

 

“Hey, I already sorted the room,” said Dean, jangling the keys as Sam entered the motel lobby. “Let’s get up and dry off. Man, I need a drink.”

“Yeah, good idea,” Sam agreed, resisting the urge to shake the water out of his hair like a dog. He looked around the lobby and realised with a sinking feeling it was one of those damned themed placed by the look of things.

The theme, quite obviously, was cats. And lots of them. Every spare inch of wall was covered in framed pictures of various felines playing with a vast array of toys. Cardboard boxes, balls of yarn… was that a kotatsu? Whoever’s cats these were, they were well treated and almost obsessively photographed. He was willing to bet anything that the rooms would be the same, and paw prints were guaranteed to make an unwanted appearance somewhere, he just knew it.

“C’mon Sammy,” called Dean from further along the corridor.

Sam started and realised he’d been drawn into staring at the display. “Yeah, just a sec!” he replied. As he turned to follow Dean, he noticed for the first time the noticeboard by the doorway. What first caught his eyes was the missing person notice he’d been studying in the car all day, but after a moment he realised it was almost hidden under the floods of lost cat posters plastered all around it. His first thought was that they were all of Fred, that the girl in the parking lot had gone overboard, but as he stepped closer, he realised that they were all of different cats, Cocoa, Marshmallow, Pumpkin, all with different descriptions of colouring, personality and, most confusing of all, power level.

Then he became aware of the rain weighing down his clothes and tore himself away from the wall, heading along the same corridor Dean had gone. As he made his way into their motel room, something snagged in his mind. The girl had mentioned disappearances, at the time he assumed she’d meant the old woman they were investigating, but now it seemed more likely she’d been referring to the cats. And while missing cats weren’t usually something for hunters to deal with, it was certainly worth bearing in mind when it could be pointing towards things such as demonic activity or even a werewolf. Yes, there was definitely something going on in this little coast town.


	2. Sassy Fran's

“Well that was a waste of time,” grumbled Dean as he walked out of the Nekoton Police Station the next morning. The storm had cleared to leave a weakly bright autumn day, set to warm up a bit later, though there was still a light breeze rustling the multitudes of missing cat posters stuck to the notice board and walls of the police station. The police hadn’t told them anything they hadn’t read in the paper Charlie had sent them; Mrs Atsume, 88, had lived alone with her 20 cats and had been reported missing by a local girl who checked up on her every day. Police had searched the area but found nothing, no signs of anything suspicious in her house, and in all honesty had probably given up on the whole thing. Although it was a small town, the police station covered a wider area and they probably had more important matters on their hands.

 “I reckon the old gal just went a bit weird in the head and wandered off somewhere, like they said in the paper,” continued Dean.

Sam shrugged. “I don’t know…” he said slowly. “She’s been gone about a week now, with cases like that they’re normally found by now.”

“Could be dead,” Dean suggested casually. He didn’t seem bothered by the prospect. “Got some cliffs around here, could have walked up there in the night and gone straight over.”

“No, they’d have found her body for sure,” argued Sam. “C’mon, Charlie wanted us to investigate this for some reason, the least we can do is check over at her house later.”

“Alright,” agreed Dean somewhat reluctantly. “Breakfast here?” He stopped in front of a diner, proclaimed to be 'Sassy Fran's' by the sign, then walked in without waiting for Sam’s reply.

 

The diner was cat themed, just like the motel. Paw print tiles, little cartoon kitties on the menu, pictures everywhere. Dean scowled at it all as he sat down in the booth, scanning around for the menu. “What’s with this place and cats?”

Sam pulled out his laptop and placed it on the table, taking advantage of the free Wi-Fi advertised in the window. “I think it started as a superstition,” he said. “It’s a fishing town after all, lots of cats hanging around. Probably seen as good luck to look after them. And now it’s morphed into a sort of touristy thing, I think.”

“Yeah well it’s weird,” complained Dean, looking around at the menu above the counter. Sam just snorted, after all they’d seen; Dean still thought a town with an obsession for cats was strange?

“What can I get you guys?” asked the waitress, young, about high school age, and somehow full of enthusiasm for her job, not just in the ‘I’m paid to smile at you way,’ but the ‘I actually like smiling at people!’ way. With the way the place was decorated it was almost surprising that she wasn’t wearing one of those cutesy cat ear headbands, but instead her wavy blonde hair was tied up in two bunches. Despite being up, it was long enough to come down to the top of her name badge, which read ‘Fran.’ Something had been written above that in sharpie, but it had been scribbled out.

“Black coffee, please,” replied Sam. “And uh,” he glanced up at the menu board. It had lots of odd sounding food like ‘Frisky bits’ and ‘sashimi’ but after a moment he saw something he recognized. “Pancakes.”

“Sure thing!” The waitress, Fran, diligently wrote down his order in her notebook, even though there wasn’t anyone else in the diner she could have confused his order with. “What would you like?” she asked Dean with another bright smile.

“Coffee, black, and a bacon bap, sweetheart,” Dean answered. “Please,” he added after a glare from Sam.

She beamed like it was the best thing she’d heard all day. “Coming right up!”

“One sec,” Dean interrupted her turn.  “Why are the prices on the board in gold fish?”

Fran was eager to explain her best. “Oh, it’s a local currency thing. I don’t really understand it all,” she confessed. “Something like boosting the local economy, I was missed that class at school. Some towns do it, it’s perfectly legal. One gold fish is one dollar and one silver fish is a cent. You can still pay in dollars though, of course!”  
Sam hadn’t paid much attention to the menu but now he saw that the prices really were marked in gold and silver fish. It caught his attention now, he hadn’t noticed any mention of local currency when reading a bit of background about the town, although he had mainly be looking up if there had been any brutal murders or anything else likely to point to spirits or monsters. “Why fish?” he asked.

Suddenly Fran’s enthusiasm almost visibly drained away. “It’s to do with the town’s history or something, well the cats mainly. Cats are important here, they’re to do with everything,” she said. “Anyway, when there were more fishermen, in the olden days, they used to call fish either gol or silver depending on how much money they got, and that could change depending on which scraps the cats ate.” Seeing the confusion the two men’s faces, she tried to explain more. “They used to give the cats the scraps from the fish, and whichever type of fish the cats went for first were considered to be much better and so the price of it went up that week.”

So cats basically controlled this towns economy? Okay, Dean was somewhat right. This place was kind of weird.

Sam thanked her for explaining it all and Fran lit up again. “No problem!” she enthused. “Feel free to ask me anything! I’ll go tell the cook your orders now!”

“Somebody’s had their Weetabix,” remarked Dean, nodding in her direction as she practically bounced off to the kitchen. “Maybe they don’t get many customers?”

It was a fair assumption, the place was empty apart from them, and once you looked a bit closer, a little run down. So had been the police station and the motel now Sam thought about it, though he’d barely noticed it after some of the places he’d been.

“So what’s the plan for her house?” asked Sam. “Do we just break in or do we need to change?”

“It’s probably empty now,” said Dean. “So just go in like normal. Saturday morning, nobody’s going to paying attention to some vacant house. We might not even have to break in, could be a spare key around.”

“Wouldn’t that still be breaking in?” wondered Sam.

In response, Dean reached into his suit pocket and flipped him the fake FBI ID. “Not for the feds,” he countered with a grin.

“You’re FBI?” asked the waitress cheerily as she placed the coffee and breakfast in front of them, eyes wide at the sight of the badge.

“Yes we are,” confirmed Dean with a smile, before dropping to a lower voice for effect. “Ah but, we’d rather it wasn’t widely advertised. Gotta stay discreet and all that.”

“Very important,” agreed Sam, nodding gravely.

The fact that if they were secret FBI agents they probably wouldn’t be showing each other their badges in a public diner was lost on the waitress, who grinned with excitement. “What are you investigating?” she asked in a whisper, which was completely unnecessary seeing as there were still no other customers in the diner.

“The disappearance of Mrs Atsume,” Sam answered after finishing his sip of coffee. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that would you, Fran?” People responded better when you use their names, especially young impressionable people like Fran who probably thought anyone in a sharp suit was something exciting. It formed a bond, in the person’s mind, and made them feel more pressure to answer. It was unlikely the waitress knew anything they didn’t already, but every source of information was worth trying on a possible hunt, and it wasn’t like they were keeping her from any important work.

Fran looked delighted to be asked by a ‘real life FBI agent’ about a ‘real life case’. “Yeah!” she replied. “She was really old and had like, a billion cats, and then one day she was gone and my friend was really sad! And me of course because it was super sad that she’s gone,” she added hastily to the end.

“I see.” Dean gave her a charming a smile despite the fact Fran had told them nothing. “Well, my partner and I are just heading out to investigate some more, after we finish our breakfasts…”

She got the hint and practically skipped off to the counter. Dean was fairly certain he could hear her humming faintly as she cleaned. The brothers ate fast and within two minutes the booth was empty again, apart from two dirty mugs and plates, assorted cutlery, the cash for the meal and a tip for Fran.

 

Fran picked up the tip, put the payment in the register, cleared away everything and wiped down the surface. Then she stopped, looked around at the empty diner and sighed, before getting out her phone and playing on Neko Atsume.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have thought of an actual plot and stuff (wow! I am surpriz at myself!) and it doesn't even include goats, but it's not all there so if you have ideas about which cats you want to see included then please tell me.  
> Also I need cat puns and I'm no good at them myself so if you have one please comment it and the best will get included in the next chapter :)  
> Kudos, comments and cat puns much appreciated! :3


	3. my worst cat pun yet

As the Impala slowly cruised into the suburbs of Nekoton, Sam kept an eye out for Mrs Atsume’s house. “What number is it again?” he asked.

“Sixty nine,” replied Dean with a slight snicker, prompting an eye roll from Sam.

 Instead of bothering to chide his brother’s childish sense of humour, he concentrated on the passing streets. “Okay, stop here, it’ll be suspicious to park too near.”

The Impala gently pulled to a stop at the curb. It was a comparatively nice area of town, leafy trees lining the street, green front gardens, rows of cute little bungalows mixed with larger family homes. But there was a slight air of neglect, scraps of paper shuffling around on the pavement, junk in almost every front garden, still wet from the night’s rain, and a weird pervading smell of fish, even though they were still a couple of blocks from the sea. It was almost utterly deserted, all the residents presumably having a lie in or enjoying their Saturday in a more exciting area of town, wherever that may be.

“Not all of these houses have numbers,” Sam pointed out as they walked along. “Or they’re hidden beneath plants or whatever.” Some of the trees had posters stapled to them, soggy from the rain, ink from the pictures running everywhere, rendering them unreadable.  “I suppose in a small town it doesn’t matter that much normally, but how are we going to find the house now?”

Dean shrugged. “It can’t be too hard. Crazy cat lady, there’s bound to be loads of cat stuff at her house. It’ll stick out for sure.”

For a moment more they walked in silence until they passed a house with even more junk in the garden than the other’s and suddenly Sam realised something. “Not necessarily,” he said, looking at the gardens with renewed interest.

“What do you mean?”

“Have a look,” Sam said, gesturing at a random garden. It had an old heater, some cushions with the stuffing showing and some soggy cardboard boxes lying around.

“Yeah, it’s garbage, so what?” replied Dean after a brief once over. Sam didn’t know what he expected really, it wasn’t like Dean was that much of an animal lover.

“That’s not just garbage,” he explained. “It’s a cat’s paradise, look there’s even some cat food left out.”

Dean stared at him for a second then took a closer look at the house they had stopped next to and realised Sam was right. Half hidden by a blown over cardboard box was a little yellow bowl full of cat food. Looking up and down the street he spotted half a dozen more almost immediately and there were almost certainly more.

“Well, that accounts for the stink I guess,” he said, wrinkling his nose. “But now what, if everyone in this weird ass town is a crazy cat lady, how do we find the right one?”

Slowly, Sam turned around and looked back up the street to the especially crowded garden they’d passed. “Something tells me it’s that one.”

 

Pushing back some tall bushes next to the front door revealed a two rusted metal numbers screwed to the wall reading ’69,’ much to Dean’s delight. “Hey look, Sammy,” he muttered, nudging his little brother in the ribs, before bending down to look at the lock.

 Sam ignored him and started hunting around for a spare key, looking in flowerpots and under the mat and suchlike. Mrs Atsume’s house was a little bungalow, red brick with white doors and windows, short scrubby grass in the front yard and every available space taken up with a paradise of cat toys. There were also several bowls of different kinds of cat food scattered about, giving the place a distinctive fishy odour. “That’s weird…” he started to say, but he was cut off by Dean’s voice.

“C’mon Sammy!” he said, turning towards him with a grin. Behind him the door swung open into the bungalow. “It was open!”

As soon as they stepped inside, Dean sneezed and tried to stop himself, largely unsuccessfully. “Damn cats,” he muttered. Although there was nobody around, he instinctively kept his voice down. “Where do you want to start?”

“In here?” Sam nodded towards the doorway on their left, which turned out to lead to the living room, which was really more of a cat appreciation room judging from the amount of toys. In the centre of the room, where you might expect a sofa or a coffee table or something normal like there, there was an enormous cat tower, stuffed with boxes, ramps and scratching posts.  The floor was a pale peach and pink checked rug, liberally dusted with shed cat hairs, but most of it was filled with cushions, rubber balls and even a tiny little hammock. Large feet made it difficult to step around them, but the Winchesters managed to make it to the open sliding window/door without even crushing anything.

“Why is this open?” asked Dean, staring out at the cat heaven of all yards. He stepped out on to the decking and had a look around for any people, but nobody was in sight.

“Maybe it was left like this?” suggested Sam. “I can’t smell sulphur or anything so it’s probably not a demon. Anyway, they prefer the whole blood everything stuff to this.”

Dean had gotten out the EMF detector, but it wasn’t picking up anything. He tried waving it around a few more times anyway. “Nada,” he said. “We’ll sweep the building just to be sure but I reckon we’ll have to tell Charlie we’re sorry but it’s not our kinda job.”

“Hmm…” Sam was beginning to agree. He’d been so sure it was a hunt last night, but now he could hardly remember why. It had probably been the storm and the long drive, making him see danger where there was none.

“Let’s go check out the other rooms then,” said Dean, stepping back inside. “Shouldn’t take too long.”

Suddenly there was a tinny clanging noise coming from the other room.

Sam and Dean looked at each other in alarm, before silently sliding into hunting mode. Dean reached for his gun while Sam drew out a demon knife, and they crept back the way they came.

They heard the noise again, louder and for longer this time. It sounded like metal being rattled around.

 ‘A ghost?’ Dean mouthed to Sam. Now there were more noises, sounds of movement, things banging and clanging and scraping slowly along serrated metal.

Sam half shrugged and with his free hand reached into his pocket for the salt, but when his hand found nothing he remembered he was still in the FBI suit and the salt was in his jeans. If it was a haunting, they were defenceless.

‘SQUEAK!’ went the rubber ball. Looking down, Sam realised he’d stood on one of the cat toys. He froze.

The noises in the next room stopped.

Holding his breath, Dean looked at his brother. ‘Come on!’ he mouthed. Sam nodded, Dean was right, whatever it was probably already knew they were there. One more noise wouldn’t change that.

Even so, the long, loud squeak of the rubber ball reflating was excruciating. The noises in the kitchen started again, this time metal shuffling and more banging, but now frantic. There was no doubt, they had been noticed, and the thing in there wasn’t happy.

 

Once out in gloomy hallway, the brothers realised the noises were coming from the kitchen. With practiced efficiency they stalked along to the door and stood just outside it.

The noises inside stopped.

It was waiting for them.

‘Ready?’ Dean mouthed and Sam nodded in reply. Dean slammed the door open and charged in with his gun ready, Sam just behind. “Who’s there?” he shouted.

Nothing. The small, brightly decorated kitchen was empty, everything neat and in it’s place, apart from a dirty fork and a tin of cat food on the counter. Sam walked up and inspected it.

“Anything?” asked Dean, still stood next to the doorway with his gun out, eye flicking around the room.

“Just this.” Sam nodded at the can. “Maybe they slipped out into the hall and into the bedroom while we were in there?”

“Let’s go check it out.” Dean lead the way out of the kitchen and turned right down the hall. After a beat, Sam moved to follow him, when several things happened in quick succession.

First, the door slammed shut.

Second, a plastic tray full of wet cat food hit Sam in the face.

Third, momentarily blinded, he stepped back into a fighting pose.

Fourth, someone held a knife to his chest.

Even with disgusting, stinging cat food in his eyes Sam could fight back. He jerked his knee upwards and it connected with his assailant’s hand, flipping the knife away from them both. He heard Dean yell his name from down the hall as he pushed the attacker away with surprising ease before wiping his eyes for a second so he could prepare his final attack just as Dean slammed open the door, gun already cocked.

“Don’t shoot!” screamed Sam at the same time as the girl trembling on the floor.

“What the hell?” exclaimed Dean, looking between the pair of them in turn.  He lowered his gun, but his stance was still wary.  

“I don’t know,” replied Sam, still watching the girl as she pushed herself backwards into the corner, her face scrunched up as she fumbled in her pockets for something. “She was behind the door and just attacked me!”

Dean stepped further into the room and looked closer at her. “What is she?” he asked.

“Human, I think. She wasn’t very strong.”

She looked familiar from somewhere, but Sam couldn’t think where. He took a cautious step towards her, but backed off when she started screaming. “Get away from me!”

“Okay okay!” Sam stepped back further, just to prove his point. “We’re not going to hurt you.”

It wasn’t exactly the most convincing thing ever. “I’ll… I’ll call the police!” she threatened, but her hands were shaking too much to dial the phone properly and she dropped it.

“Don’t worry, we’re feds,” Sam explained, carefully taking out his fake ID. Besides him, Dean did the same, though one hand was still on the gun. “We’re here investigating the disappearance of Mrs Atsume, do you know anything about that?”

“And why did you attack my brother?” Dean added with a snarl, waving the gun a little to empathize the point as he pushed the fake ID back into his pocket, once he was certain she’d gotten a look.

The girl on the floor shook her head. “I thought you were robbers or murderers…” she explained. Suddenly her face brightened. “Hey, didn’t I see you last night? You said you’d look out for Fred!”

“That was you?” Dean asked. Next to him, Sam nodded confirmation. 

She nodded as well. “I’m Kat,” she said. “Kat Tench. I help Mrs Atsume with her cats and check up on her every day.”

“You’re the one who reported her missing?” asked Sam. He gestured for Dean to put the gun away and reluctantly he did, before stepping forwards and holding out a hand.

“Yeah and I, agh!” Kat broke off as Dean splashed holy water into her face as he helped her stand. “What was that for?” she asked half indignantly as she rubbed her face dry with her sleeve.

She hadn’t been burned. Not a demon at least and anyway she was clearly too weak for a demon, vampire, werewolf, or anything else for that matter. They could do further tests with the silver knives in the trunk but cutting up generally peaceful civilians wasn’t really the best way to get through an investigation.

“Just a new FBI procedure,” Dean lied fluidly. “Nothing for you to worry about.”

Although she didn’t look convinced, Kat didn’t argue. She brushed back a stray strand of her red hair that had escaped the messy ponytail and studied the brothers. “You’re looking for Mrs Atsume?” she asked finally, something like hope lighting in her brown eyes.

Dean and Sam both nodded in sync. “We came to see if we could find anything that wasn’t in the police reports,” explained Dean. “Sorry if we frightened you.”

“Is there anything you can tell us that maybe you didn’t tell the police?” Sam asked. “Or something they wouldn’t listen to?”

Kat looked pensive for a moment. “Well…” she said eventually. “I did tell the police but I don’t know if they included it in the report, or maybe they didn’t think it was important.”

Sam and Dean exchanged looks. “Tell us, please.”

“It’s about her cats.” Looking up at them expectantly, Kat seemed to think this was enough information.

“Umm… Fred?” prompted Sam, remembering the poster she’d handed him.

“No, Fred’s more my cat,” said Kat, shaking her head. “Look, haven’t you noticed anything strange about this town?”

Dean laughed. “You mean other than this entire town obsessed with cats?”

Kat met his eyes with a totally serious gaze. “Yes,” she said. “Everyone in this town loves cats.”

“So?” shrugged Dean.

“So don’t you think it’s strange that in all the time you’ve been here, you haven’t seen a single cat?”

Sam suddenly realised what had been bugging him the whole time. Kat was right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay I finally did a chapter good work me :)  
> Comments and kudos keep me going :)  
> And remember to say if you want a certain cat in the fic or have a good pun. Also I apologize for Kat's name but it was too good an opportunity to let waste.


	4. Dean's coffee is not the purrfect temperature (and I'm really running out of puns now sorry)

 

Kat had refused to explain more until she’d made them all a hot drink. “It’s only polite to give guests a drink,” she told Sam, ushering him into a chair. “And Mrs Atsume is very particular about manners.  If she found out I was rude to you she’d be furious!”

Sam decided it was probably best not to mention the bowl of cat food and the knife, which might just about qualify as rude. He’d succeeded in washing out most of the sticky jelly by shoving his head under the tap but the stink was still clinging to him. A shower would definitely be top of his list when they got back to the motel.

Only when everyone had a mug of hot instant coffee in their hands did Kat began to talk more. “I tried to tell people,” she complained. “But cat disappearances are pretty common here, it’s unavoidable. So I guess it’s not surprising nobody pays any notice.”

“Why?” asked Dean. He took a long gulp of his coffee and started coughing, barely managing to swallow the almost scalding drink. Eyeing it cautiously, he placed it back on the table, deciding that it was just a coincidence that Sam’s drink didn’t have quite the same volume of steam coming off it and appeared to be perfect drinking temperature.

Kat shot him a look that made her views on his intelligence quite clear. “Well, when the cats move around this much it’s easy to think they’re gone when really they’re just visiting someone a couple of streets away. People get used to it.”

“Sounds like what this town needs is better fences to keep the cats in then,” replied Dean once he’d recovered from his coughs, his grin making it obvious how proud he was of this suggestion, but Kat didn’t share his enthusiasm.

“What? You can’t do that!” she exclaimed, genuine outrage sending her voice higher. “For a start it would never work and anyway, keeping a cat to yourself is selfish!”

Exchanging confused looked, Sam and Dean had a quick battle of wills until finally Sam gave in and asked the question they were both thinking. “Um… why? That’s what most people do, isn’t it?”

This was apparently too much for Kat who looked ready to either find the knife again or burst into tears. “What? You too? I thought you were a cat lover, Agent… um… whatever your name is!”

“Smith,” supplied Sam after a second to recall which badge he’d used today. He wasn’t entirely sure what he’d done to be branded the ‘cat lover’ out of the duo when really dogs were much more his forte. “And this is my partner…”

“Also Agent Smith, no relation,” Dean continued smoothly. There was a brief exchange of ‘but I thought it was my turn to be called Smith’ glares between the brothers before Kat resumed her tirade.

“Well I don’t know how you people do it, but here we look after our cats!” she announced, brown eyes smouldering. Her confidence gave the impression this was a spiel she was well practised in. “Cats naturally have a large area they roam in, only someone heartless would try to enforce a tiny patch of garden onto them! As people who truly love cats, we accept that they won’t just belong to one family and actively encourage their more natural behaviour by having a community that collectively owns the cats! We all feed them, we all play with them and we all love them!” By now the fire was truly burning within her, but then it suddenly diminished as quickly as it had flared up. “But now they’re gone and nobody will listen…”

After a moment of stunned silence, Dean was the first to speak. “That sure is one way to do it I suppose…” he said slowly. “So nobody wants to acknowledge the cats are gone because they think they’re just at someone else’s house?”

Kat nodded. “Some of the more passionate people like me have been looking for the cats we legally own, I even set up a Sunday club, but nobody much have made a big deal because it’s been happening so gradually. I’ve put up posters for all of Mrs Atsume’s regular cats as well, but the police won’t take it seriously even though they all went at the exact same time as her!”

There was another pause as the Winchesters considered the situation. A sudden loud ‘PING!’ interrupted, causing Sam and Dean to jump slightly in their seats.

Laughing a little, Kat pulled out her phone. “Sorry,” she said, tapping around on the screen. “It was just my reminder to feed the cats.”

“Didn’t you already do that?” asked Dean, nodding towards the empty cat food can that was up on the countertop.

Kat carelessly waved him away with one hand, still looking down at her phone. Electronic beeping video game music started to play quietly, a cute little repetitive tune. “I meant my Neko Atsume cats.”

“What?” the brothers asked in startled unison. Neither had heard of ‘neko’ before but they could at least recognise the name of a victim.

“You haven’t heard of Neko Atsume?” Kat asked in surprise, even managing to tear her eyes away from the exciting world of free app games. “But it’s like the best game ever!”

“Being a fed doesn’t leave a lot of time for games…” Dean said tersely, apparently ignoring the fact that 1) they weren’t real FBI agents and 2) he was addicted to Flappy Bird for weeks at one point.

To Kat this was apparently no excuse. “It’s so cool!” she exclaimed, beaming properly for the first time. “It’s like real life, because you buy toys and food for the cats and you put it in your garden and then cute cats appear you can give nicknames to and take pictures of!”

This didn’t sound an awful lot like real life, but it was becoming unclear how much like ‘real life’ life in Nekoton was anyway.

“You should get it!” she concluded, looking expectantly at Sam with wide eyes.

He shifted uncomfortably, wondering if maybe being the supposed cat lover was actually some sort of punishment for something. “Uh…”

“My friend is the one who created it, she’d be so happy if I told her a real life FBI agent was playing her game!”

The sincerity of the request was too much to withstand. “Okay…” Sam fished in his pocket for his phone and a quick search of the app store later the new game was downloaded.

Dean was already stood up and drumming his fingers on the back of his chair. “Shouldn’t we be getting on with the investigation, Agent?”

“Yeah yeah, just a sec.”

Sighing, Dean began poking around the kitchen, opening and closing drawers and checking inside tubs. The EMF detector didn’t go off and neither of them could smell any sulphur, just like in the living room.

Kat and the tutorial quickly guided Sam through exciting tasks such as purchasing the cat food and toys and setting them out in the back yard, which he couldn’t help noticed somewhat resembled Mrs Atsume’s. The cute graphics were actually pretty good, he realised, and he really liked the cute animation of the little old lady who set out everything in the garden.

“That’s Mrs Atsume,” Kat said, pointing at her hunched figure scurrying across the screen. “Fran released that update on the same day she disappeared, so she made them look like her, as a sort of mark of respect or something I think. I thought she didn’t really like her but she must have really put in a lot of work to get all the details. She’s even wearing what I last saw her in!”

“Huh…” When he looked closer, Sam could just about see the resemblance between the little cartoonish figure and the pictures from the MISSING poster and reports.

“Did you say Fran?” Dean suddenly asked from somewhere inside the cupboard under the sink. “As in, Fran from the diner downtown?”

It took Sam a second to remember what Dean was on about, but Kat immediately nodded. “Yeah, that’s her!”

“She makes games?”

Suddenly Kat was on the indignant defensive. “What, you think just because she’s a girl she can’t? Fran’s the best in our school at computers! She even runs the Sunday computer club!”

“Woah now, calm down!” Dean shuffled out backwards, straightened and held up his hands soothingly. “I was just surprised she had time to do that as well as waitress, that’s all!”

Kat shrugged. “You’d be surprised at what people will do when they have to.” Then something on the screen caught her eye. “Okay, you’re done with that! Now you close the game and wait a while,” she instructed. “Then when you check back, a cat will be there!”

Sam obediently pressed the home button, waited a second and reopened the game. Once the loading screen had rushed by he found the screen exactly as before. He closed and reopened it again, and again, but no cats.

“It’s broken,” he declared, locking his phone and sliding it into his pocket.

Giggling, Kat shook her head. “Try again later,” she suggested as she stood and began to gather the empty mugs.

“It’s clear in here,” Dean announced, having searched every cupboard. “We should check the other rooms.”

The taps squeaked as Kat turned them on. “What are you looking for?” she asked as she began to wash up the mugs. “Clues?”

“Yeah,” agreed Dean. “You haven’t happened to have seen anything out of the ordinary, have you?”

“Like what?”

“Cold spots, weird smells, flickering lights?”

Kat shook her head. “Nothing like that sorry. How would that help even so?”

“It’s just procedure to ask,” Sam said. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll go have a look around now.”

 

Aside from the astounding volume of cat pictures, the rest of the house was relatively normal. It seemed like the cats were primarily in the living room and yards. Now they could safely have the lights on and not have to keep quiet, with the comforting natural noises that come from a house with people in, it was no longer so gloomy, just a little quieter than expected, as though the absence of all its usual inhabitants muffled the sounds of Kat’s washing up and their footsteps.

“Bedroom or bathroom?” asked Dean when they reached the doors.

“Don’t mind,” shrugged Sam.

“Fine, you do the bathroom.” Dean opened the door on the right and stepped inside. It was sparsely furnished, just a bed with a neatly folded patchwork quilt at the foot and a clean dresser with a little stool, but the walls were lined with yet more mismatched framed cat pictures, some of them so old they were yellowing, or black and white.

As he poked around the room, even lifting up the mattress to take a look at the bed slats underneath, Dean reflected on the case. It was starting to look like there was something up and Charlie had been right when forwarding them that news article they might have otherwise missed. She’d only found it because she was internet friends with some computer loving person like her in the town and had been worried about them. Strangely she hadn’t told them who this person was so they couldn’t visit them for her like he’d offered, but it was unlikely they were in any immediate danger anyway.

Despite the mounting oddities of the case, and the entire town for that matter, it was still unclear as to what the ‘danger’ might be. Dean had seen his fair share of hauntings and monster attacks, more than almost anyone, but that was being absolutely no help whatsoever at the moment. Missing animals, missing people, and no sign of anything. It was really starting to get on his nerves, especially when he could sense there was something just a little bit out of his reach.

 He started on exploring the drawers of the old dresser, but they were mostly full of cat treats and assorted brushes, presumably for the cats. His finger were getting covering in gross meaty smelling crumbs, and spiked on the metal teeth of the combs and he was really quite done with this stupid case by now, weird ass cats and random teenaged girls who give him stupidly hot drinks and all. If things didn’t clear up soon then maybe they’d have to call on Cas to help, which, while disturbing what was meant to be his recovery at the bunker, might actually be kind of nice…

However, almost as soon as the thought crossed his mind, Dean’s hand snagged something that was regretfully familiar feeling. When he pulled out his hand and saw the tiny bag he’d grabbed, his suspicions were confirmed. “Son of a bitch!” he swore. “SAM! GET IN HERE!”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey how r u i am dead thx my stupid keyboard keeps breaking but i finally managed a chapter and even planned stuff in my head and there arent even goats im so productive this evening :D  
> Leave comments and kudos and puns and you will be visited by an imaginary cat of greatness.


	5. Lavender Bags

Careful not to touch any of the contents, Dean emptied the bag onto the dresser top. “Yup, that’s definitely a hex bag.”

“Looks like cat bones,” said Sam as he shifted through the various bits and pieces, spreading them out with no thought for the state of the dresser. “Some dried plants, I think it’s lavender maybe? Some ashes and… hey, that’s weird…”

“What?” Dean asked, leaning in to get a closer look.

Sam held up a ribbon of something thin that glinted orange in the light. “Looks like… copper wire?”

“Copper wire?” repeated Dean. “The hell’s that doing in there?”

“I don’t know…” Sam absentmindedly twisted it around his fingers a few times.  “I’ve never heard of this being used in a spell before, have you?” He held out the wire for Dean to take a look, but it was refused.

“No, never,” Dean said, shaking his head. “So Mrs Atsume was carted off by witches then?”

With a shrug, Sam started collecting up all the bits into a little plastic bag to study later. “Looks like it, I suppose.”

“Why?” It was more of a thought spoken aloud than a real question, neither of them knew the answers yet.

Sam‘s eyebrows scrunched up as he thought hard. “Maybe it’s not a witch? They normally just kill people if it’s someone they want to get rid of.”

“I don’t know man,” Dean sighed. “Witches are crazy. You remember that one time back in New Jersey when…”

“I remember, I remember,” Sam interrupted quickly. “I don’t think anyone needs to go over that again.”

“Whatever.” Dean snickered slightly at the memory. Not often he found a case that could make him laugh, especially not one with witches, but that witch had had a great sense of humour, and nobody had even died! “But anyway, this sure is a weird hex bag, if that’s what this is I mean.”

Glad of the return to the topic at hand, Sam nodded thoughtfully. “I think it is, the rest fits. It’s just the wire.”

“So they’ve found some old spells we’ve never seen before?”

“No, copper wire couldn’t have been in any old spells, it wasn’t invented way back then. Like, they had copper but not like this.”

Realization dawned on Dean. “They’ve been making their own spells,” he said. “So they’re extra dangerous, not only powerful enough to disappear a crazy cat lady complete with cats, but invent the spell needed to do it.”

“Hold on a second,” Sam interrupted, pointing at the hex bag again. “We know the cats roam around a lot, there’s no way the witch would know when they would all be in range of this little one. There were probably more hidden around somewhere.”

“I didn’t see any earlier though. I suppose we better ask Kat if she has.”  


 

 

They found Kat just finishing up in the kitchen.  “Little bags?” she repeated, frowning slightly. “How do you mean?”

“They’d probably look like this,” Dean told her, fishing out the hemp bag from his pocket. Instantly Kat’s face cleared.

“Oh, you mean lavender bags! Yeah, I’ve seen them around. They’re pretty popular cat toys.”

“No, not a lavender bag,” Dean interrupted, shaking his head. “I mean one of these.”

“But it might have lavender in it,” added Sam helpfully. “Or not.”

Kat frowned again. “A small bag with lavender in sounds a lot like a lavender bag to me.”

With all of his patience, Dean managed not to snap. “It’s _not_ a lavender bag! I don’t even know what that is, but it’s not this.”

After a second of rooting around in her pocket, Kat pulled out a bunch of keys with a large pink keychain toy cat hanging off them. She held the cat out to Dean, and he took it uncertainly, careful not to squish the soft fabric too much. “It’s one of these,” she said. “They’re stuffed with lavender and they smell nice. My friends and I make them for each other sometimes!”

Dean smiled tightly and handed it back, ignoring Sam’s snickers. “That’s just fantastic,” he managed. “But we need to know if you’ve seen any of these.”

“No, wait Dean,” Sam interrupted. “Kat, did you check inside any of these ‘cat toy lavender bags?’”

“Well… no, like, why would I?” she replied, glancing uneasily between the two of them. “Should I have?”

“If you could bring them here so we could check them it would be really helpful,” Dean explained, his voice low and urgent.

“I uh, I’m not sure where they all are, but I could probably find a few quickly!” she offered, before racing out of the room. From the living room came the sound of furniture being moved about, and within a minute Kat was back, dropping a couple of bags onto the kitchen table Instantly, Sam and Dean moved forwards and started examining them, leaving Kat hovering anxiously on the edges.

Most of the pile was lavender bags, as Kat had first suggested, the strong smell made their eyes water slightly as they pulled open each bag to check. But when they last bag was slit open, the now familiar mixture of charred bones, ashes and dried lavender came pouring out.

Peering around them, Kat gasped slightly when she saw the contents. “What is that?”

 “A clue,” Dean answered grimly, before swiftly moving on before she could begin to ask more. “Who placed these, or could have, do you know?”

With a sad shrug, Kat shook her head. “New stuff pops up in here all the time, I don’t really pay any special attention to the when and how, and as for who could have done it well… I know I’m here every day, and Mrs Atsume, and sometimes my friends tag along… but she probably had visitors during the day and stuff, I don’t know.”

“So we’ve no way of knowing who could have planted them…” Sam said in a low voice to Dean, who nodded, wearing a scowl.

“We should get going, we’ve got research to do back at the motel,” Dean announced, louder, as Sam gathered up the bags. “Thank you for your help.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Sam added, looking up to find Kat tapping away on her phone again.

She met his eyes expectantly and waved the phone at him. “What’s your work number? I’ll let you know if I find any more of those things.”

“Here, let me do it.” Taking her phone out of her hands, Sam began to type it in, but jumped when suddenly Dean sneezed.

“Stupid cats,” he grumbled, apparently forgetting for a second the present company, but not for long as Kat’s rage sent almost tangible waves out across the room. “Let’s go,” he muttered and beat a hasty retreat.

It only took a second longer to finish the number. “Done.” Sam handed back the phone, but Kat was still glaring after Dean as though he had mortally offended her and her grandmother… which by her standards he probably had. Sam felt kind of bad, even if she was ‘slightly’ overreacting, and cast around for something to distract her. “Hey… why don’t I check my Neko Atsume before I leave?”

Instantly Kat stopped her glares and faced him with a bright grin. “Yeah, do it!”

Rather taken aback by the sudden switch of gears (had she done that on purpose?) Sam tapped open the game and prayed it wouldn’t take too long, he was just itching to find out what copper wire could possibly be doing in a hex bag.

The loading screen seemed to go on forever and the little white cat’s blank stare was kind of creepy. “C’mon…” he muttered.

“Sam!” yelled Dean from up the hall, sticking his head in through the front door. “Hurry up!”

“Coming!” Sam replied automatically, shoving his phone in his pocket and heading out the door, half turning as he left. The game would have to wait. “Thanks again for all your help, Kat.”

She smiled in reply, after throwing a quick scowl in the direction of Dean’s voice. “Anytime, Agent.”

“What took you so long?” complained Dean as they walked back up the street. “Kid’s got a crush on you I bet.”

Sam shook his head and chuckled a little. “Nah, she just really really _really_ likes cats. She looked like you’d punched her when you badmouthed them.”

Dean whistled, unconcerned. “Weird ass town alright. What were you doing then?”

Digging into his pocket, Sam pulled out his phone; Neko Atsume was still up on the screen. “Just checking my cats.”

“Oh yeah? Got any good ones?” They’d reached the Impala; Dean pulled out the keys and jumped into the driver’s seat as Sam wandered around to the other side, barely looking out for traffic. On the screen, bouncing around the little red ball he’d placed earlier in its cartoonishly cute paws was an orange tabby cat. It sparked a memory and Sam tapped it to take a closer look. A rather familiar information screen popped up.

“I think so…” he finally replied, slowly lowering himself into the car. “This one’s got a power level of 150 and apparently he’s a ‘lady killer’…”

“Haha, after all the pussy huh?” Dean grinned, but when his excellent (in his opinion) joke was ignored, he started to fiddle with his cassette tapes, grumbling under his breath about his little brother’s complete lack of appreciation for wit.

 “And his name’s Fred,” finished Sam, still peering at the screen curiously. “Look.” From his pocket, he pulled out a slightly soggy piece of paper. Unfolded, it was the poster Kat had handed him the night before. Typed up were the exact same details as in the game.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yooo sorry that one's so short but unfortunately school has interfered with my plans and I'm going to have to put this fic on hiatus until like the end of May *cri* because I may have kind of bitten off a bit more than I can chew with my school project and may be currently attempting to get most of a book written by the end of May... oops.   
> So sorry about that but hey at least the quality can only go up with that much practice huh? Until then give me your comments and kudos and puns and I will attempt to get back to this as soon as I can!   
> *cries v much because I'm really enjoying writing this fic*


	6. Research!

The last thing Dean needed or expected to see when he returned to the motel was Sam sat on his bed tapping away at his phone clad in only a white towel around his waist with his still damp hair dripping onto the sheets.   
However sometimes, or most of the time if you’re a Winchester, life’s a bitch and so that sight was exactly what awaited him.  
“Dude, what the hell? Get off my bed!”  
Sam’s head jerked up, just like when they were kids and Dean would catch him trying to sneak a story book into the piles of archives they were picking up at the library. “Sorry man, I just got distracted,” he explained like that was a perfectly good reason to soak his brother’s sheets. “I only meant to check my messages when I got out the shower but then I ended up checking on my cats. Look, I got a new one!” He turned his phone screen and held it out, but Dean shook his head and crossed the room to the little table.   
“Never mind your damn cats,” he said, dumping the armload of books onto the plastic surface. “I’ve already had the guy in reception trying to show me his and I swear the librarian was playing while I was talking to her. How many people have this game?”  
Over in his corner, Sam was pulling his clothes on, thankfully. Walking in on his little brother in various states of indecent was inevitable, but that didn’t make it any less undesirable. “Did you get anything good from the library?” Sam asked from somewhere inside his shirt.   
“Small town, smaller library. Found one or two that might be helpful, if we’re lucky, but when are we? Most of these are from Baby’s trunk.”   
Since moving into the bunker, Baby’s mobile library had been considerably streamlined as the extensive collection the Men of Letters had left behind meant they were able to replace most of their old general lore books with fewer, more comprehensive tomes. Sam’s favourite part of the change had been the increased ease of late night motel research. Dean’s favourite part had been that it left more room for weapons, not to mention ‘emergency’ copies of Busty Asian Beauties.   
Almost of soon as he opened his first book, Dean was complaining. “Not sure what good research will do.We already know it’s a witch and these aren’t exactly going to tell us anything we don’t already know about ganking the unhygienic bitch.”  
“We know what it is, but we’ve no idea who it is.”  
“We know Kat’s there a lot, what about her? Maybe the old lady had a bad word to say about cats?”  
Sam shook his head. “The hex bags contained charred cat bones. No way it was that girl.”  
It hadn’t been like Dean had really suspected her anyway, but he hated not having a solid lead. “How do we find her then? Kat mentioned having her friends over, we could ask them?”  
“Could take too long.”   
Personally, Dean thought it was very unlikely a junior crazy cat lady would have that many friends, but that was using real world logic that didn’t apply in a town full of crazy cat ladies, gentlemen, children and possibly even dogs. This place was so kitty obsessed that Kat was probably set to be prom queen or something.   
“Our best lead is that we know the witch is making her own spells,” continued Sam. “Not something we’ve seen a lot of, but if any of these books have information…”  
“We’ll know what to look out for,” Dean finished for him. “Got it. Great, I just love research. Especially the fun witchy kind.”  
“Why don’t we ask Charlie if she’s got some free time to help?”   
Charlie had proved invaluable with research before and even more amazingly, she actually enjoyed the tedious task. Not to mention that her magic knowledge had really improved recently. All in all, Dean wished he’d thought of asking her before trailing round the library.  
“Alright.” Dean waited while Sam booted up the laptop. As always, his innate talent for connecting to the internet whenever, wherever, pulled through and they were opening up Skype in no time.   
It came as no surprise that Charlie was on her laptop and so answered the call immediately. “Hey guys! What’s up?”  
“Hey Charlie,” replied Sam. He budged over a bit so Dean could fit into the video as well. “We’re in Nekoton, following up that article you sent.”  
“Oh great! How’re you doing?”  
“We’re pretty sure it’s a witch,” Dean explained. “We found some weird hex bags in Mrs Atsume’s house.” As he explained all they knew and how they were going to find the witch, Charlie’s face grew paler, until he was forced to interrupt himself. “Charlie? What’s wrong?”  
“Nothing!” she replied quickly, trying to smile. She could see they weren’t convinced. “Just… y’know… lady problems…”  
“Okay!” announced Sam, blushing furiously. It took him a moment to get out his next words. “What we were going to ask is if you had a free moment to do a little research into what witches need to make new spells?”  
“New spells...?”  
“That’s what this looks like. We’re gonna read through our books as well but three is gonna be quicker than two.”  
Charlie looked away from the camera for a moment. “Candles,” she muttered, then repeated it a bit louder. “I know that’s part of what they need. Not sure what type.”  
“How’d you know?” asked Dean. “We’d never even heard of someone doing it like this before.”  
“Um… Just got bored one day,” she shrugged with a half grin. “Wikipedia, ammirite? You only go there to settle a Star Wars trivia argument and three hours later who knows what you’re looking at.”  
“Right. Because we all do that.” Dean looked at Sam and smirked. “Anyway, we can’t just go around looking for candles, there must be loads even in a town this small. We need to narrow it down.”  
“I’m pretty sure if you had a look in the library you could find a book that could tell you what you need,” Charlie suggested.  
“Why do you…” Sam began to ask, but Charlie suddenly looked at something off screen in alarm.   
“Crap,” she muttered. “Got to go, the cake’s burning. Bye boys!” She ended the call before they could even respond.   
“Well that was weird,” Sam said, shutting the laptop lid and pushing it to one side.   
“Yeah, I didn’t know she could bake.”  
“I meant what she said about the library books. Why would she know what’s in a random small town’s library? Do you think she’s hiding something?”  
“What could she have to hide? It was probably all she could think to say to help.” Dean pulled the two library books out of the pile and handed the thicker one to Sam. “She was right though, looking through these will be way more helpful than looking through the ones we’ve read before. I’m pretty sure I’d remember if there was something about making spells. We’re already closer to finding what we need thanks to her, let’s just hope these books have some detail about what kind of candle we need or we could be here a while.”  
They settled into their usual research silence, the kind that could stretch for hours, even days, a silence punctuated only by sighs, the turning of pages and the clunks of their mugs or, more commonly, beer bottles, as the slow hours rolled by until Dean would slide a book across the table with a ‘check it out’ or Sam with his usual ‘so get this…’  
Only today the silence was broken by more silence. Technically it was broken by Dean saying ‘Sam?’ but the only reason he did that was that he hadn’t heard Sam turn a page for quite some time and a silence where there should be sound, even during a silence, is worrying. Staring at a single page was nothing new for the older Winchester but Sam usually tore through lore so fast it was surprising he didn’t tear the pages. So in fact it was Sam who broke the silence with too much silence and you should really think twice before accusing Dean Winchester of breaking things, be it hearts, lamps, silences or otherwise.  
Sam’s guilty start was all the proof Dean needed to confirm his suspicions, plus the non too subtle attempts to slide his phone back into his pocket. “Dude, really? Collecting computer cats during research is a new low.” Before Sam could make up an excuse, Dean stood up. “I need coffee.”  
The only mugs were chipped, stained and predictably cat themed. He chose the least disgusting one and as the kettle boiled he wondered what had possessed someone to make any of them, let alone purchase one. Demons could be ruled out almost immediately. For a start, they’d try to make the mugs out of real cats. He’d just passed up a decision of ‘temporary insanity’ for a verdict of ‘lifelong insanity’ on the basis that had the disorder been temporary the mugs would have been smashed the instant the owner regained their senses, when his phone rang.   
“Hey Cas, what’s up?”  
There was a pause before the familiar gravelly voice replied. “I believe the common informal response is ‘the sky.’”  
It was hard to keep a grin off his face and only part of that feeling was due to Castiel sounding better than when they’d left a couple of days ago. “Has Charlie been giving you lessons again?”  
“She said understanding common exchanged would improve my social skills.”  
He’d already come a long way since they first met, back when his people skills weren’t so much ‘rusty’ as nonexistent. “Might need a few more, just to be on the safe side. When did you do this anyway, we just spoke to her she’s at her apartment?”  
“She’s been texting me. I’m good at texting.” If you didn’t know him, the pride in his voice would be almost imperceptible, but Dean could see it clear as holy water. Castiel’s words sparked an absurd shred of pride in him - he’d been the one who taught him how to text in the first place.   
Sam twisted around in his chair to mouth, ‘is he alright?’ and Dean relayed the question. “Why are you calling, buddy? Did something happen?”  
“No,” Castiel replied, before correcting himself when his usual desire for precision kicked in. “Of course, many things have happened but none that constitute the sort of emergency I’d require your assistance for, if that’s what you meant.”  
That did leave the possibility that there had been incidents Castiel had dealt with alone, which even with him weakened still covered a wide range of scenarios, but he was evidently alive so Dean wasn’t too worried. “Why’re you calling then?” It wasn’t that he minded, it was good to hear from his friend, but Castiel wasn’t one for making casual phone calls.   
“Staying here alone is dull. I’m perfectly fine so I don’t see why I should have to stay here.”   
Before leaving, Sam and Dean had strictly forbidden Cas from teleporting after them, as much as you could strictly forbid an angel of the lord from doing anything. The fact that he had barely been able to get out of bed at that point had probably been the main reason he had thus far obeyed.   
“Cas, have you spent a full day out of bed yet?”  
There was a notable pause before he received a reply. “Yes.”  
“You’re in bed now, aren’t you?”  
An even longer pause. “Yes…”  
Dean sighed. They’d tried to impress on him that the most helpful thing he could be doing was resting himself up for the next big fight but looking after himself was still a lesson he was yet to learn. How he thought he could help when he was like this was beyond Dean, but it was just like his friend, their friend, to try.   
‘He’s fine, just wanted to help out,’ he mouthed to Sam who smiled and, with the worry about one of their only friends gone, was able to get back to the really important things like replacing frisky bits, whatever that meant.  
“Look man,” Dean said back into the phone. “I know being stuck in bed sucks but it’s not so bad as it seems. Read a book or watch some TV or uh, I dunno, download the cat game Sam’s playing. It’s called Neko Atsume or something weird.”  
“Kitty Collecter.”  
“Huh?”  
“That was Japanese you just spoke in. Did Bobby give you some lessons before…”  
“No, nothing like that, it’s just what the game’s called. Look it up, should keep you entertained, god knows Sammy’s hooked enough already.”  
For a moment or two there was only the sound of Cas’s breathing on the other end of the line, slow and even. Good to hear he wasn’t wheezing anymore. “It is downloading now. I suppose I will stay here and collect imaginary cats...”  
“Good plan,” said Dean, but Castiel wasn’t finished yet.  
“...alone.”  
Oh. So that’s what this was really about. Stupid that it took him so long. “How ‘bout when I get back we go to that burger place just down the highway together? Get a few beers, relax, whatever.”  
“I look forwards to it.” He sounded happier now, though still not in a way most people would pick up on. “Oh, the game has downloaded now. Goodbye, Dean.”  
“See ya,” Dean replied, but Castiel had already hung up. He made himself that coffee and sat back at the table, sighing when he realised they still had an ass load of books to get through.  
In a completely unexpected event several well respected academic experts are referring to as ‘a miracle’, Sam looked up from his game and raised an eyebrow. “Am I invited to the diner?” he asked.   
“Course,” Dean grunted and tried not to sound too much like he wished Sam wasn’t. He already disliked the direction this conversation was heading in. Ever since Charlie had reminded them that ‘Supernatural by Carver Edlund’ fandom was still regrettably persisting in its existence, Sam had been pretending to have trouble telling the difference between perfectly normal platonic manly friendships and… other things. At least, Dean sincerely hoped he was pretending. The alternative was too horrific.   
Sam refused to get the hint. “Because if you wanted time alone…”   
“More research, less eww,” Dean snapped, taking a huge gulp of coffee and settling down to a fascinating volume about… well, it wasn’t so fascinating he could tell you if that’s what you wanted to know. This time Sam managed to receive the signal and even put away his phone so soon they were back into their research silence that wasn’t silence at all, only this time it was loud enough. 

Even before Sam said anything, Dean cut him off. He’d heard the intake of breath that usually preceded Sam trying to say something funny. “No more digs about me and…” He stopped, saying ‘me and Cas’ sounded a bit too ‘him and Cas’ to win any arguments.   
Luckily, there wasn’t one to try and win. “No, I actually think I have something,” Sam said with big puppy eyes filled with hurt at the mere suggestion he would ever think of winding up his brother at the worst of times. The look might have been more effective if Dean wasn’t 69% (*snicker*) certain that he had just swallowed whatever joke he’d had to save for another time.   
“Fine, what is it?”  
“So get this…” Sam’s mopey expression faded as soon as he said the magic words. Most of the explanation was boring, lots to do with channeling energies or humours or whatever else was needed to create a new spell, Dean had no idea, but there was one part he did get.   
“Tallow candles huh? There can’t be that many people around here who would have some, they’re really old fashioned. All we’ve got to do is go to wherever people get candles around here and ask if they’ve sold many recently.”  
“Looks like. Our witch would probably have bought a lot in about the last month I’d say. I don’t know if other types would work, the book doesn’t mention any others but I don’t think there was much variety back then anyway. It’s as good a start as we’re going to get.”

There was still time until the stores would start to shut so they locked up the motel room and headed down the main street on foot, checking out any likely looking shop for candles and, once found, asking the clerks if they knew anything about who might have purchased a lot. A lot of the candles they found turned out to be cat toys. The real ones they found weren’t sold in big enough volume to match what they were looking for. By the time they’d been out an hour, the sky was getting dusky and shopkeepers were showing signs of wanting to pack up, even though it was a while off from the closing times displayed on most doors. Dean supposed there wasn’t much point in keeping a shop open when you’ve got no customers, but it was irritating. If they wanted information it would only be harder if everyone went home.   
“Let’s grab a bite to eat and then have a think,” Dean suggested after they wasted a good ten minutes debating whether or not tea lights would be sufficient to channel the forces of evil or whatever the candles in the witch’s new spell were meant to do. (The decision reached was no, if anyone was interesting in pursuing that kind of hobby area) “Sassy Fran’s is just down there and anyway, didn’t Kat say that waitress girl was her friend? Maybe we can ask her stuff again.”  
He didn’t really care what Fran had to say, their first meeting had been enough to convince him she knew nothing, but he did care about getting a hot meal and stopping browsing shops looking for candles like a middle aged woman and convincing Sam that it would help the case was an intrinsic part of getting Sam to do anything. Thankfully, it worked. “Sure.”

Fran was leaning against the counter using her phone when they walked in. Her expression was bright and cheery when she turned to see who it was, but seemed to fall a notch or two when she saw who it was. However, seeing as this was one of the most hyperactive waitresses they had ever encountered, this still left her a good few degrees above most people’s excitable. “You’re back!”  
“Just couldn’t stay away from those…” Dean struggled to remember what he’d ordered that morning. He had a feeling they got so few customers Fran would definitely remember and hate him if he got it wrong. “Bacon baps…?”  
Judging from her smile, he’d successfully avoided making an eternal enemy out of the girl who would shortly be bringing him food which always something he strived for in life. “You want the same as earlier?” she asked as she showed them to a booth, the same as that morning he noticed.   
“That would be great, thanks.”  
When Fran delivered their orders, Sam asked the question. “Do you know where we could find any tallow candles in town?”  
She smiled gratefully as he steadied the mug she almost knocked over. “Candles? I… Oh, sorry, one moment please!” Another customer had just walked in and she rushed off to greet them before Sam or Dean could get a word in.   
“Don’t get many customers at all, huh?” Dean said to Sam, nodding over at Fran taking the man’s order with more enthusiasm that would usually be thought possible.   
“No,” agreed Sam. His eyebrows crinkled the way they always did when he was thinking, but Dean didn’t bother asking what was on his mind. If his little brother wanted to say then God knew he’d hear enough about it and besides, the bacon bap really wasn’t half bad.   
He reiterated the question when Fran began to clear away their things. This time, she was able reply without interruption.“Why do you need to know? Is it to do with Mrs Atsume?”  
“Y-” began Sam, just as Dean cut him off. “No, sorry, unrelated. It’s just it was Agent Smith’s mother’s birthday today and he realised he didn’t have a gift and we thought some nice tallow candles would be just the thing.” As to why anyone would think they were the perfect gift was beyond him, but it was the first lie that came to mind so he went with it.   
“Yeah,” Sam agreed hastily. “She’s been struggling with bills and stuff so having some candles for light would really help.”  
Dean threw him a warning look, if they went on about the matter too long it would be way more suspicious than being too vague, but Fran’s suspicion softened. “There's a hippie kind of store just around the corner, you could try there maybe?”  
“That would be great thanks,” Sam told her as they got to their feet ready to leave.   
“No problem. Hope things look up for for your mother soon!”   
By the time they were out the door, she was on her phone and almost beaming again. 

After all his time hunting, travelling the small roads and visiting the small towns all across America, Dean had seen way more than his fair share of hippie shops. The one he walked into in Nekoton could have been the first, second, fiftieth or fifth hundred he'd been in judging from the complete lack of anything to set it apart from the any other he had visited. It was like there was only one hippie shop that inhabited its own crystal and incense filled dimension that had thousands of entrances, one in almost every town and no matter which door you took you would end up inside it. The fact that he was almost relieved with it’s relative normality after the onslaught of cats the rest of the town had provided was a sign he really needed to finish the job and fast so they could get the hell out of there.  
Dean wasn’t surprised to find that had he been asked to describe the girl on the till before walking in he would have been almost spot on the mark. Long blonde hair in messy braids, loose wavy clothes, lots of crystal based dangly jewelry and big wide eyes. “We’d like to ask a few questions if you don’t mind,” he told her.   
“Oh, like, sure…” she replied, stuffing her phone into her pocket with a little guilty smile. Playing Neko Atsume had been missing from Dean’s mental expectation but judging from today he should have seen it coming. “So… what’s the matter? You look a little stressed, are you looking for calming crystals?”  
“No, no, nothing like that,” Sam replied with an only slightly forced looking smile.   
“Are you sure? We have a very good collection, it’s right over…”  
“Actually, it’s candles we’d like to talk to you about.”   
“Great, we’ve got plenty! Scented, non-scented, loads of colours… any idea what kind?”  
“What about tallow?”  
“Uh… not sure we have any of those…” Her eyes darted over to somewhere behind them and Dean turned to look. In the far corner were shelves laden with almost every type of candle imaginary and a few you’d be hard pressed to come up with. Having never been much of a candle fan himself, except for when hunting called for it of course, he wouldn’t have known what to make of it all but thankfully his lack of candle identification skills did not retract from his reading ones and he was able to clearly read the handwritten sign next to a clump of fat creamy candles on the bottom shelf.   
“Looks like you do over there,” he pointed out.   
“Ah…” the girl tried to smile but her wide eyes were looking worried. She knew something, that much was clear. It was the what that they wanted to find out. “Oops, I forgot about them. Must be because we only just restocked.”  
“You just restocked?”   
Sam gave him a look but didn’t tell him to turn down the intensity, yet. Years of working together had taught them that sometimes you just had to let the other do his thing, especially when they sound like they could be onto something, which Dean definitely thought he was.   
“Yeah… it’s what we do when we run out of stuff. Are you sure you don’t need some calming crystals? We also have spiritual incense, very good for- oh, sorry!” Her phone pinged and after quickly scanning the message, she typed out a reply and received one in seconds. The brothers took the opportunity to exchange a ‘kids today huh’ look.   
“So sorry, just my little sister…” She shoved the phone back in her pocket and smiled brightly at them. “Anyway… I guess you’re in luck! As you noticed, the tallow candles are right over there!”  
“We’re more interested in who might have bought them before actually,” Sam explained. “Specifically in bulk.”  
Frowning, she crossed her arms. “I can’t tell you that, sorry... There are rules against breaching customer privacy and things.”  
Dean reached into his pocket and produced the magic wallet. “We're FBI, you can tell us.”  
“But…” Already she had been fair but now she had visibly paled. Wasn't every day the FBI barged in when it's only five minutes until your shift is over Dean supposed. That didn't mean he wasn't going to keep pushing her. “It would interfere with the candle energies…”  
They'd encountered many excuses from people who didn't want to tell them things but this one was new. “That's-”  
Sam cut him off. “It's okay Miss, we won't disrupt the energies.” He gave one of those sympathetic smiles that almost always melted the witnesses’ hearts. “Look, if someone was buying a lot of candles and selling them on under false pretences, would that uh, ruin the uh…”  
“It would definitely unbalance the humours,” she confirmed with a grave nod. “Is that… Is that what's been happening?”  
“Yes… It is…” Sam was clearly struggling with where to go next with their story so Dean filled in for him.   
“We want to stop whoever’s doing this so that the ripple effect of the dischord won't affect your shop, but we need your help.”  
Her blue eyes took a determined set. “Okay. I think the largest bulk order of the tallows was when Marlicia Green came in a few weeks ago and cleared out the stock.”  
“Who is she?” Sam asked. “Did she say what they were for?”  
“Some… girl in my sister’s year.” From her expression the word she was thinking of was a lot stronger. “She's got totally unbalanced vibes. Makes fun of my sister and she's super rich which is just so unenlightened because obviously she's not going to understand nature if she's that materialistic. That's what I wanted to tell her when she got all those candles for ‘meditation club,’ like… You don't need that many to find peace y’know? But I'm not allowed to put of customers so…” She gave an exasperated sigh. “Anyway, I should have known she was doing something uncool with all those candles. She's always buying weird stuff for that club but never that much at once.”  
“Can you tell us about this club?” Dean asked. “It could be her base of operations.”  
The shop-girl’s expression made it perfectly clear what she thought of this club/evil candle trading base. “I dunno, they just like… meet at school on Sundays and sometimes weekdays and… Meditate? I don't go to school anymore I don't know. I only know what much because my sister says they meditate waaay too loudly and it's annoying. Um… plus apparently she's a cat hater and you know what they say about them…”   
Dean wondered what was said about people like him but forced himself to adopt the expression of one within a group enjoying a group session of being disapproving of those outside of the group and nodded.   
“I think that’s all we need, thank you,” Sam said.   
She beamed. “No problem agents!”  
As they walked out the door, Dean made a point of not hearing her final farewell of “are you sure you don't want any calming crystals?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FINALLY sorry I know I said May but I meant end of and then life got in the way but now I did it I hope you enjoy! Let me know if you did :D


	7. stuff goes down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> read the chapter title

In a perfect world, early Sunday mornings would be reserved for peaceful sleep, not walks to the nearest coffee shop for breakfast pastry, but Dean had point blank refused to move and so the duty fell to Sam. Croissants tucked under one arm, he played on Neko Atsume as he walked. The sidewalk was so quiet he didn’t have to worry too much about bumping into anyone and the absence of Dean meant he was able to feed his cats without constant interruptions.

At least in theory. Just as he was about to place another bowl of frisky bits, he received a call from an unfamiliar number. “Hello?”

“Agent!” gasped Kat. Her breathing was laboured and he could hear the pounding of her feet. “You… quick… she… with the bags!”

“Kat, what is it? Where are you?” Sam began to run down the street, dodging round a morning jogger and darting across the road just as the lights changed. “I can’t understand what you’re saying!”

More heavy breathing, but the footsteps came to a squeaking stop. Sam felt a tight coil of worry around his stomach. She was cornered. “No! Stop! Please! You’re my friend!” The held back tears made her voice thick but the fear was clear.

“KAT?”

“She put them in the game!” she choked out and now Sam could hear something else, another voice, chanting ancient words. The witch, it had to be.

“Who is she? I need to know!”

“It-” Kat’s voice cut off and there was a clatter as her phone fell to the floor. Sam stopped where he was, in the motel lobby, listening intently for any sign she was alright, but there was only silence. Then, the squeak of shoes on a shiny floor and then the call was ended.

Sam jabbed at the screen to try and call again, but all he did was set out that last bowl of frisky bits. “No!” he shouted at it and ignored the strange look the guy behind the reception counter gave him as he sprinted back up to the room.

“Finally,” grunted Dean as he entered. “I’m starving man, what have you got?”

“We need to get to the school, now. The witch got Kat.”

“What? Sonofabitch”

“She called me and it sounded like she was running away. She said something about… bags… and a game? I don’t know, she was really indistinct. But then she stopped running and I heard a spell and then she was gone.”

Dean held out his hands. “Okay, okay,” he said. “We’ve got to save her, I know, but why the school?”

“She said she ran a club there on Sundays and we know that Marlicia girl does too. It’s our best bet.”

“Let’s go then.” Dean stood up and started out of the room. “All the stuff’s in Baby.”

 

It wasn’t far  to the school but the drive felt a lot longer than it should have been. Dean kept asking questions about the call but even when Sam told him everything they still couldn’t make much sense of it.

“Bags, hexbags, sure that’s easy,” he said. “But what did she mean about the game?”

“I don’t know,” Sam repeated for about the eighth time. He checked Neko Atsume without thinking, a habit already, and his mood darkened further when he saw this stupid fat cat called Tubbs had eaten all the food.

“Just tryna figure stuff out.”

“I know.” The turned onto the school’s road and caught sight of the big ugly building at the other end. “Here.”

Dean stopped the Impala just inside the school carpark and jumped out. Sam made to follow him but then he caught sight of his phone screen. “Dean!” he called.

“What?”

“I have an idea about what she might have meant about the game.” He turned his phone screen to let Dean see the little animation that played when you set out food, the one with the little ‘Mrs Atsume’ pottering out to the garden, but this time there was another figure next to her.

“Is that…?”

“Sure looks like her.”

“Coincidence?”

Sam shrugged. “When does that ever happen to us?”

“And it wasn’t there before?”

“No. I definitely would have noticed if Kat was a part of the game before I got that call.”

 

The room was dim, the air heavy from the few scented candles scattered around (all at least six paces away from any flammable material as per the extracurricular activity rule book) and the only sound the steady breathing of several teenagers. One of these was Marlicia Green, renown leader of the Meditation Club. About three of these were her friends who had come following promises they would all go shopping afterwards. The rest were several boys who had come under the mistaken belief there would be yoga and they would get to see hot girls in interesting positions, but it had been several weeks before they realised that they were incorrect and by that point it would be too awkward to try leave. You couldn’t just tell Marlicia Green you didn’t want to be in her club. Anyway, meditation wasn’t too bad, especially if you got stoned beforehand.

The only slightly baked peace of the club was abruptly shattered by two men bursting in. “Which one of you is Marlicia Green?” the taller one demanded.

Wincing in the sudden bright light spilling in from the corridor, most of the club pointed in her general direction. “What do you want?”

“What did you do with Kat?” the taller man demanded.

“Kat? As in Kat Tench?” Marlicia didn’t bother to conceal her surprise they thought she would have anything to do with someone like her.  “I saw her earlier but we didn’t speak. Is there a problem?”

“Don’t play dumb!”

Everyone else in the room suddenly found being as small a target as possibly very high on their list of things to do. Marlicia glowered at the strangers. “What did you-”

“Sam, look at the candles,” the shorter man interrupted, nudging his partner. “There’s nowhere near enough of them, going on what the book said.”

“Are those tallow candles?”

“Excuse me?” Marlicia looked prepared to bring her wrath down on those two poor men, but then she was cut off again.

“The candles, are they tallow?”

“I, uh, yes I think so. They’re new actually, Fran gave me a couple when I met her on the way in.”

The men exchanged looks. “Fran?”

The portion of the club who weren’t staring up at the ceiling and wondering if they’d be allowed to go to the vending machine for snacks watched with interest as Marlicia struggled to comprehend why these two attractive men were urgently asking over two of her least favourite people. “Sassy Fran, the computer girl who works in her uncle’s cafe. She’s running her ‘club’ down the hall. As a matter of fact, I think that was the direction Kat was heading in if you’re looking for her.” On cue, her friends snickered at the mention of Fran’s pathetic attempt to get other people interested in boring computers. What kind of a club had only one member? Even so, that game she’d made was pretty cool… At least three different people began to feel the urge to check their cats.

“Let’s go,” the shorter man said and with that they ran out the room, letting the heavy door swing shut behind them and leaving the three unfortunate app players helpfully spotlighted in the dark by their screens, perfect targets for Marlicia’s impatient sharp tongue.

 

Through unspoken agreement, the brothers paused before entering the IT room and drew out their guns. It was hard to imagine cheerful Fran capable of burning cats and hexing her friends but they’d been fooled before by witches they’d spent far more time around. As a waitress, faking a cheerful demeanor was practically what she was paid for.

“Ready?” Dean asked quietly, his hand on the door handle.

Sam nodded. Gun cocked, they crept into the room. It was that eerie type of quiet you could almost mistake for silence until someone points out the hum of computers and you realise they were making all these noises all along. The room looked empty but then from along the far aisle came the clacking of keys in starts and stops, sometimes just one or two then suddenly a rush as though her fingers couldn’t tumble out whatever she was typing fast enough. As they crept closer Sam began to pick up another sound in between the clicks. It sounded like… sniffing?

“We know what you did,” Dean told her when the rounded the aisle. In the corner sat Fran, hunched over a keyboard with lines of code spanning the screen. When she turned to look her red rimmed eyes went wide, not just at the gun but at the fact there were other people in the room at all.

“How did you-” she began to ask, her voice oddly thick. Sam stepped closer and realised her cheeks were shiny with tears, but still she held a defiant scowl he couldn’t have imagined on her before.

“Doesn’t matter, but we know you put them in the game and we need you to bring them out again.”

Fran shook her head sending her long golden hair flying around her. “I can’t! If I take them out then…”

“We can make you,” Dean warned, nodding at the gun still in his hand. It felt wrong, threatening a schoolgirl and Sam knew Dean wasn’t any happier than he was about it but they couldn’t think of her as a schoolgirl, they had to keep in mind the dangerous witch they knew she had to be. Even so, Sam found it hard to watch the fear grow in her expression and found his eyes forced away to the desks. All the usual computer equipment was there, keyboards and mice and broken headphones, but other things as well like stray pencils, lost rulers and scattered pastel cloth toys.

“I… can’t…” Fran’s voice shook as Dean stepped further down the aisle. “If you sh-shoot me I won’t be able to reverse the spell!” she added when he showed no sign of lowering the gun.

“Maybe, but I doubt you need that computer to.” He turned the gun to her screen. “Looks like a lot of hard work, do you really want to lose it all?”

Her hand darted out towards the keyboard before she pulled it back in close. She sighed. “Okay, just let me get the stuff out of the cupboard.”

“Like we’re falling for that,” Dean snapped. “Tell him what you need, he’ll get it. And we know spells, so no funny business.”

“Um…” She listed off a couple of herbs and usual magic ingredients. “The mouse blood is behind the unused red textbooks.”

Sam kept an eye on her as he moved to the cupboard at the end of the row but she sat with her head low, defeated. Even so, he could feel the hair on the back of his neck prickling. The cupboard was unlocked but everything in it had a layer of dust. In the gloom, he struggled to make out where it had been disturbed. Easy to see why she’d chosen this as her magical store. In the back corner the dust looked a little thinner so he pushed away the heavy books and took a look.

“DEAN!” he yelled but it was too late to warn him.

“IMMOBILIUS!” Fran spoke the word and the concealed hexbags began to glow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol turns out I can post fics from school yay for filtering systems


	8. CATastrophe averted! (saved the best pun til last obviously)

It was instinct rather than thought that made Dean squeeze the trigger when he heard Sam shout, but it was magic that meant he found his body locked in paralysis. "Sammy?" he called and took some small relief that at least he could speak.

"I can't move!" Sam replied from inside the cupboard.

"Neither. Damn hex bags." Dean looked at Fran with contempt. Damn witches. "So what now? You're gonna put us in your stupid game as well?"

"Hey!" objected Sam and Fran simultaneously, causing Dean to glare at the store cupboard and his traitorous brother (at least as much as he could while not being able to move his head.)

"I..." Fran looked ready to cry again, glancing between the frozen hunter and her busy computer screen. "Why can't you just leave me alone?"

"Not while you're hurting innocent people."

“I’m not hurting anyone!” protested Fran. “They’re perfectly safe! Just… someplace else. Where they can’t get in the way.”

“The way of what?” Sam asked. “Mrs Atsume wasn’t doing anyone any harm, all she did was look after cats!”

“And what about Kat?” added Dean, trying not to feel too pleased when he saw the girl fight off a flinch. “I thought she was your friend. Is that what friends do, wipe each other of the face of the earth because they were in the way?” Privately, Dean thought a dimension full of cats was probably exactly where Kat would like to be, and having her there was probably better for the world at large, or at least his sanity, but it was the principle of the thing goddammit.

“Kat was a mistake,” murmured Fran, so quietly Dean wasn’t sure Sam would be able to hear. “She dropping in here while I was making up a hex bag and started asking bad questions… then she found the cat bones and… I had to do something or she’d ruin things!”

“Ruin what?”

“Everything!” Fran shook her head and avoiding Dean’s gaze. “I wanted to explain but there was no reasoning with her. If she’d been a bit calmer she would understood it’s for the best.”

Sam, evidently able to hear after all, said, “a lot of people do a lot of bad things because they think it’s ‘for the best.’”

Fran considered that. “I’m going to explain it to you,” she finally decided. “So you can tell Kat when I send you into the game. And she can forgive me.”

“Is she really likely to forgive burning her precious cats?” Dean wondered.

“I didn’t kill any cats!” Fran looked outraged at the suggestion. “I wouldn’t!”

“Then where did you get those charred bones?”

“My sister’s girlfriend works at the pet cemetery. They’ve got a crematorium as part of it. She gave me a hand.”

“Your sister’s a witch as well?”

“No.” Fran looked down at her hands and crossed them neatly in her lap. “I haven’t told her what I’m doing, not properly. She knows something’s up but I told her it’s going to help the café and she was happy to help without asking too many questions. She has a part-time job in a hippie store when she’s not working at the café so I’d asked her to keep an eye out for anyone asking about tallow candles and let me know when they did. She’s the one who told you Marlicia had those candles.”

“Why’d you do that?” Sam wanted to know and Dean could hear the irritation in his voice that they’d been fooled by the shop girl.

For the first time this encounter, Fran looked a little like she had back in the cafe, even if her smile was rather half-hearted compared to the dazzle of before. “Because I don’t like her or her stupid club and I thought it would be funny if it got interrupted by hunters.”

“You know about hunters?” Dean wasn’t sure why he was so surprised, it wasn’t unusual for most witches to, but Fran was so young and this did not seem like a town bursting with knowledgeable witches, no matter the usual abundance of cats.

“I thought you might be coming. Christie said-“ Fran stopped herself. “Anyway, she’s a bitch, a little bit of payback is fair enough. Just because she doesn’t have to worry about money…”

“Christie?”

“A nice lady online who helped me with magic. We were just talking theoretically of course, I don’t think she knew I was trying it for real. But then she warned me to keep all my stuff hidden because she thought hunters might be coming to town soon. I probably should have guessed it was you when you came into the café. Not often we get new customers.”

“Or customers at all, right?” Sam interjected. “That’s what this is about right? You need the money from Neko Atsume, and you thought putting real cats in the game would make it better. Maybe a small spell to make it addictive?”

“Quite a powerful spell actually,” Fran corrected. “But close. Yes, we need the money… My dad, he… And the café gets no business… but I didn’t put the cats and Mrs Atsume in the game to make it better. I made the game to put them in.”

“How is that different?”

“This is what you need to explain to Kat,” Fran said, finally meeting Dean’s eyes, almost pleading. “Make her understand. I had to get rid of the cats, they’re ruining this town!”

“You… don’t like cats?” After too long in this town Dean was almost as surprised as a native would be that someone was immune to the fuzzy bastards’ apparent charm.

“I hate them!” Fran scowled and despite being a tall adult male holding a gun and probably twice her weight, Dean probably would have felt compelled to take a step back if he could. “Nasty, dirty evil things! They eat too much and scratch up things and drag dead stuff inside and yet everyone seems to love them! No wonder nobody comes to our town, they think we’re all nutters!”

“Isn’t the cat thing a tourist attraction though?”

“If people are passing through then sometimes,” Kat admitted. “But they don’t tend to stay long. They seem to think any town so overrun with cats has got to be dirty and they pass right by our café on their way out of town to the nearest big chain diner. These cats are killing the town and my café and so they had to go. And so did Mrs Atsume. I hate that old hag. If she didn’t insist on collecting up all those cats with all the junk in her yard then maybe tourists wouldn’t think our town is such a tip!” Fran gestured at the numbers running across the screen.  “I already had some code that made something close to Neko Atsume left over from a Computer Science homework and after my chats with Christie it wasn’t too hard to work the spell into it. Then I figured after all that time spent I might as well get some reward so I did a little bit more work and released the game. It worked out well, right?” She smiled faintly, like the smile was just a little nudge from wobbling away. “Nobody got hurt!”

In truth, Dean had hardly been listening as Fran rambled on. Just the usual bad guy self-justification crap really. And not only that, she’d tried to justify her reason for bragging about how clever she’d been by pretending she cared what Kat thought. Although… she did sound a lot more desperate for reassurance that she was right than most of the people they faced down did. But if it was reassurance she wanted, she was looking for it in all the wrong places. She was dangerous, and had to be stopped, and Dean was grateful for her chatter because it had given him time to try and think his way out of this mess.

“So make sure to tell Kat what I told you, okay?” Fran said. She got to her feet and pulled two hex bags out of her pockets. “Just hold still now…” Like he had a choice. She carefully balanced one bag on Dean’s outstretched gun toting hand, before darting into the cupboard, presumably to do the same.

“Hey, Fran,” said Sam. “So, these are going to send us into the game once you say the incantation, right?”

“Uh huh, I thought you’d already worked that out?”

“Right. So, what exactly are we going to be doing in the game?”

“Um…” Dean tried his best to fight the spell so he could watch the conversation, but it was too strong. All he could go on was their voices, and she sounded unsure. “Helping Mrs Atsume and Kat put out the items I suppose. Looking after the cats.”

“But what if we don’t want to do that?”

Dean began to catch on. “Yeah, no way am I having anything to do with those things.”

“Well I suppose you can just stay out of sight?” suggested Fran. “It doesn’t really need all of you setting out stuff. Perhaps it could be a customisation option.”

Despite having no clue if what he was thinking was even possible, Dean decided to push ahead with his idea. “And if we start to break things?”

“We could do a lot of damage to the game if you put us inside,” Sam added. “A lot of damage to your reputation, and the café’s. You worked hard on this all, didn’t you? You don’t want to put it to waste.”

“We’re experts in breaking things,” Dean confirmed. “Nobody going to want to play a game that’s got us smashing things up when they want to do anything.”

“You wouldn’t break things! I won’t let you!” Fran rushed back to her computer. “I’ll… I’ll make it so you can’t!”

“Oh yeah?” Dean taunted. “You’re good, but you’re not that good. I bet that sort of coding would take a while and you don’t have that kind of time, do you?”

Fran said nothing.

“You’ve got two options, kid. Put us in the game and we’ll smash it all. Leave us here and it won’t be long until we’re discovered and your creepy witch stuff as well. Or let us, Mrs Atsume, Kat and all the cats go and we’ll take the worst of your stuff and leave you in peace. You’ve done bad stuff but you haven’t killed yet, we’ve let people go for worse.”

“But… what about the café? What about the town?”

“Neko Atsume is a pretty popular game in town, right?” said Sam. “Got many players elsewhere?”

“Not really,” Fran admitted. “I told you, I never meant it as a big thing, it was just easy to work the spell into.”

“I have a feeling it could be really popular, worldwide even,” Sam continued. “Let us go. Take everyone out of the game. Spend your free time on what you can change, like your great game, instead of things you can’t, like this crazy town. You could make a heck of a lot more from a top of the charts game than a café anyway.”

Fran’s face was changing, Dean could see her thinking it through, trying to find the trick. She liked the idea he could tell, but she was still cautious. “How do I know you won’t hurt me, or shoot the computer as soon as I let you go?”

“You don’t, not really,” was all Dean could say. “But we don’t kill kids. And anyway, the last thing we need is another murder investigation trying to follow us around.”

“And the computer?”

“I’ve got a friend who just downloaded your game.” Even as he said it, Dean wondered why that was the first thing that came to mind. “I think he’d be pretty upset if I caused it to break already.”

Stupid as it was, it seemed to do the trick. Fran hadn’t looked too happy about the prospect of trapping more people anyway, there was something almost like relief on her face when she realised she had a way out. “Okay. I’ll do it.” She waved a hand, muttered something under her breath and it was like all the tension in Dean’s body had suddenly disappeared. He almost stumbled, but managed to disguise it by tucking away his gun.

Sam emerged from the cupboard, not looking happy about the temporary paralysis and still suspicious of Fran, but glad to be out nevertheless. “And the others,” he ordered.

“One moment.” Fran’s fingers began to fly across the keyboard as she chanted to herself, ancient words mixed with more modern sounding computer terminology. “Done!” she announced suddenly, jabbing the enter key with satisfaction. There was a slight disturbance in the air as it was forced to make room for the sudden appearance of Kat, who dropped to her knees as she looked at her surroundings in surprise.

“Where did Fred go?” she asked, her gaze dropping to her arms which was still held like she was cradling something. Then she noticed Fran and jumped to her feet. “Agents! Careful! It was her!”

“It’s okay Kat,” Sam said, holding out his hands. “We’ve sorted it out. She’s letting everyone go.”

“Where are the cats?” Kat demanded, rushing over to Fran and looking ready to fight. “What did you do with them?”

Fran learned back in her chair, shrinking back from her friend and held out her hands “It’s okay! They’ll be back at Mrs Atsume’s house now. Back to where the hex bags picked them up in the first place. Mrs Atsume should be in bed.” She held her breath while Kat considered this.

“I need to go check on them right away!” she decided and turned to go already, before pausing and looking back to Sam and Dean. “You’ll be heading over there to check she’s back, right? Could I get a lift?”

 Sam looked to Dean. “It’s your car.”

With a feeling he would probably regret it, Dean forced a smile. “Sure thing.”

“Are you alright?” Fran asked and for a second Dean thought she was talking to him, until he saw her looking with concern at Kat. “I was pretty sure it would be safe but I’ve never pulled anything back from that dimension before…”

“Yeah I’m fine!” Kat replied, grinning. “It was great there! I got to see all the cats and look after them and hug them and everything!” Then she caught sight of the Winchester’s expression and forced a stern look upon her face. “Not that it makes putting people in games okay. I’m going to have to speak to you about that later.”

“I, um,” Fran began, sat hunched over in her chair and staring at the screen. “I’m sorry. For trying to put you in the game. It wasn’t part of the plan. I just… I just want things to be okay. With my dad’s health and the café and everything.”

Kat was quiet for a moment. “You could have asked me for help. Instead of trapping people in a game. That’s how people usually deal with things.”

Sniffing, Fran nodded and wiped at her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

Dean stood still, unsure of what to say or do. After all, wanting things to be okay was a fairly harmless motive in general. Just most people didn’t go to such extreme lengths to make it so.

Luckily his little brother was still as soppy as ever and had room in his stupid heart even to try cheer up a witch. “It will be okay,” he promised. “Just keep working on that game; you’ve got a real talent for it. And keep away from that magic nonsense or next time we won’t be as lenient.”

It was hard to tell if Fran was comforted or terrified by this. “Okay…”

“Here, we’ve got a friend who’s good at computers, maybe you could talk to her and learn some stuff,” suggested Dean, feeling like if Sam was going to try and be friendly he might as well be too. (Plus if Cas liked the stupid cat game then it would be nice if it could be improved, he most definitely did not think.) He grabbed a pen and a scrap of paper out of his pocket and scribbled down one of Charlie’s email addresses on. “We’ll tell her to expect you and maybe she’ll give you a hand.”

“Thank you!” Fran sounded like she when waitressing then, until she looked at the paper and her grateful expression turned to one of surprise. “Oh! You know Christie as well?”

Sam and Dean exchanged looks.

 “Dammit Charlie!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm more surprised than anyone else that I actually managed to finish this! It was fun :)  
> Kudos much appreciated and I'd love a comment :3  
> Thanks for reading, especially to anyone who's stuck with it the whole way through this trainwreck!


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